


the careful undressing of love

by dollsome



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27925108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: Set right after "My Bloody Valentine." Dean and Cas wait out a hard night together.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 22
Kudos: 156





	the careful undressing of love

**Author's Note:**

> This episode left me in my feels, okay!!!! The image of Dean and Cas waiting together outside the vault while Sam got his miserable detox on really got me in the heart. Plus, you know, hamburger hilarity. Who can resist such a heady combo??
> 
> The title is from [Carol Ann Duffy’s “Valentine”](https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/valentine/) (a very cool poem that I just discovered on a title search!), just to really lean into the fact that, hey, was this not Dean and Cas’s first Valentine’s Day?
> 
> Set after Dean goes out to pray at the end of the episode. I realized belatedly that this fic implies Dean was out driving after drinking, but hey, it's Supernatural, not Good & Healthy Life Decisions TV Hour!

Soon after Sam has finally gone silent, Dean comes back to Bobby’s toting white plastic convenience store bags in one hand and a fast food bag in the other.

“There you are,” says Castiel.

“Sorry. Should’ve said don’t wait up. I got hungry.”

Castiel doubts that, but he understands the lie. The small rituals of normalcy, and how they make existence bearable.

Dean looks to the bolted door. “He’s--”

“Asleep,” Castiel says, as a mercy. Sam isn’t quite asleep, but it will sound like it to Dean, who can’t hear what Castiel can. Sam's suffering has exhausted him for now, is the important thing, and so he can rest, or something like it.

“Good,” Dean says. His hand twitches slightly. He would run it over his face if he wasn’t holding something. Castiel has begun to memorize the way he moves, and what it means. “Okay, good.”

Dean sets the bags on the floor and pulls a hamburger out of the fast food bag, then leans against the wall. He looks at the hamburger for a moment -- because he isn’t hungry, because he thinks he is empty -- but then unwraps it anyway and takes a bite. Small rituals.

I heard you out there, Castiel could say. The only reason I didn’t come to your side was because I wasn’t the one you were calling for. I didn’t like staying put.

But he understands Dean’s preferred language now, or has at least begun to, so he jokes instead.

“Did you have to pick hamburgers?”

Dean swallows and gives him a half-smile, the corner of his mouth crooking up. “Sorry, man. I was just really craving ‘em after watching you shove a hundred down your gullet. And then when you were just crouched on the floor like a dog eating the raw stuff? Mwah!” He pinches his fingers together and kisses his fingertips. “Irresistible.”

“I’m sorry I failed in our mission.”

“It’s okay. You couldn’t control yourself. It happens.”

“Not to me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Not until recently.”

Dean looks away from his food, his eyes shifting to Castiel.

There it is, radiant in the dim light.

It helps, after all Castiel has lost, to know that Dean feels it too. This unseen force that joins them. Castiel is learning about being in the world: that even here, in a place so teeming with life and passion, you don’t speak of a feeling like that, or move in the direction it tries to steer you. That kind of closeness is reserved for families and lovers. Friends -- the most fitting description for what they are -- stand careful distances apart and don’t mind the distance, or even notice it. It makes sense conceptually. It isn’t difficult with Sam. It’s how Castiel knows that with Dean, it’s different. Dean knows all the rules about how to stand and how not to stare, how to keep the people around you comfortable but not too comfortable, and sometimes he likes to tutor Castiel in how to act like a human, as if Castiel is the young one and Dean is old and wise. Sometimes Castiel forgets, in those times, that that isn’t the case. Maybe in some ways it is.

But there are moments, too, when he catches it in Dean’s eyes, in the curve of his lips and the set of his shoulders: the sharp awareness of how close they are and how far apart. How unlike anything else it is.

This is a moment like that.

Dean looks away first. Castiel is getting used to it.

It’s for the best. Nothing of the earth is meant to feel so sacred. Better to be careful, and keep quiet.

“Hey, I got you a little something for the meat hangover, by the way.” Dean hands Castiel the remains of his hamburger so he can rifle through the convenience store bags. The fluttery plastic sings at the touch of his fingers. “We got ultra strength Tums, we got Pepto, we got GasX. And when all else fails: an eight-pack of Canada Dry to soothe your little tummy after you harf it all up.”

“I don’t need any of that,” Castiel says. “I’m an angel.”

“Yeah. An angel who ate two hundred burgers. Better safe than sorry, Cas. What are you gonna do if you get barf on that trenchcoat, huh?”

“I’ll find another one. And Canada isn’t dry,” Castiel adds about what is obviously some kind of beverage, for Dean’s amusement. “It’s notoriously snowy.”

Dean chuckles, just as Castiel had hoped he would. He comes back over to where Castiel is standing and rests his fingers on the hamburger wrapper near Castiel’s. The air burns, cool and stinging, in the space where they almost touch.

“Thanks for holding that,” he says, taking it back.

“My pleasure,” Castiel says, grimacing at the hamburger because Dean will think it is funny but also because it is funny, a little, when he thinks about it. At the thought of the dozens of hamburgers he devoured, he almost feels a twinge of queasiness, like this body and its consequences are really his.

Dean takes a defiant bite, pretending to mock Castiel by eating it. But of course, that isn’t the truth about Dean, no matter how much Dean would like it to be. The truth is the bags on the floor.

“Thank you,” Castiel tells him, “for thinking of me.”

He nods down at the convenience store bags.

“No big deal,” Dean says, chewing. “I needed a distraction, ‘s all.”

Castiel doesn’t know how to talk about what he heard while he was useless on the floor and Famine spoke to Dean. He wants to tell Dean, _You are not empty. You are not dead inside. Don’t you feel it, how even the tiniest pieces of the world exalt, loving you?_

Not a friend thing to say. He knows that much.

So:

“Thank you,” he says again. Sterner this time. The kind of tone that would have shattered glass and felled buildings before.

Dean isn’t chewing anymore. Just watching Castiel. His eyes gleam with tears that won’t be allowed to go anywhere.

“You’re welcome,” he says at last, almost shy.

Good enough. All that can be done for now.

“You should sleep,” Castiel suggests, suddenly protective like a child with a small animal, “while Sam does.”

“Nah. Not tired. But hey, if you have somewhere to be--”

“I don’t.”

“Well, good,” Dean says. Castiel can tell he’s glad. “Guess it’s just you and me then.”

“I guess so,” Castiel agrees, mimicking the way Dean’s leaned against the wall.

For a while, they exist in silence. Dean finishes off the hamburger and crumples the wrapper into a ball. He throws it at the fast food bag. It lands right inside.

Dean lifts his arms in triumph, then turns for Castiel’s approval. “Hmm?”

“Very impressive,” Castiel says.

“Well, don’t sound so excited. You’ll pop a blood vessel or something.”

“I won’t. Don’t worry.”

Dean laughs quietly. “You know--” His voice is casual, which tells Castiel that what he’s about to say matters. “This is pretty much the first time I’ve ever had company when Sam’s been sick.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. I mean, Bobby’s been around sometimes, but for the most part, I was flying solo. I’ve nursed that kid through some doozies. You heard of chicken pox?”

“I’ve heard of the pox. Pustules. Blindness. He’s recovered very well. His skin is immaculate.”

“Okay, first, I don’t need to hear you talking about my brother’s immaculate skin.”

“It was nothing personal.”

“And the pox and chickenpox, not the same thing. Maybe it wasn’t that gnarly. But have you ever tried to stop a six-year-old from scratching himself?”

“No.”

“It’s not easy. I had to superglue his socks over his hands. Which, you’ll be shocked to hear, created its own set of problems.”

Castiel laughs, imagining Sam with sock hands. The Sam in his head is the Sam he knows; he has to remember to consider what he might have looked like as a child. It’s still hard to wrap his mind around the concept of being young and getting older.

And yet he thinks it might be what’s happening to him, in a sense. Just in time for the apocalypse.

“And then there was the time--” Dean stops himself. “Sorry. You don’t wanna hear about this.”

For a moment, they’re in sync, thoughts tugged to the other side of the heavy door.

“No,” Castiel says, “please. Tell me about all Sam’s childhood ailments.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, surprised. “You mean it?”

“Yes.” And then Castiel adds, to be generous, “The more grotesque, the better.”

Dean brightens. Not much, but enough. “Well, you asked for it, buddy. Buckle in. Have you ever seen what happens when someone decides to eat an entire box of Fruit Loops, followed by all the definitely-past-its-expiration-date Chinese food in the motel minifridge, just because someone was a little late to get back with the daily meal?”

“No.”

“I have.”

Castiel considers what he knows about the human digestive system. “Rainbow vomit?”

Dean snorts. “Try rainbow vomit out every orifice.”

“Not the ears,” Castiel says, disturbed in spite of himself.

“Well,” Dean says, “no. Not the ears.”

“Good.”

“But I wouldn’t have been surprised. And then there was the flu season of ‘93; now, that was one brutal son of a bitch ...”

The night wears on and Castiel listens. To the sound of Sam slowly coming back to himself; to Dean’s voice, warming the dark.


End file.
